Looking Inside the Unemployment Spell

As data from multiple waves of HILDA become available, Australian researchers will be able to study the unemployment spell in detail never before possible, hopefully leading to an improved understanding of the nature and impact of unemployment. This paper makes an initial contribution in analysing the experience of unemployed Australians based on a range of variables available in the Wave 1 data, largely with a view to highlighting HILDA’s potential for future research in this area. Aspects of unemployment investigated include the perceived barriers to employment, job search methods, financial circumstances, subjective measures of ‘wellbeing ’ and the role of social support and ‘social network capital ’ in shaping the unemployment experience. The initial findings show that the unemployed are clearly worse off than other Australians on a range of measures, however no pronounced deterioration in their circumstances with time in unemployment is observed

The Evaluation of Australian Labour Market Assistance Policy

This thesis is comprised of a series of published papers relating to the evaluation of active assistance measures for the unemployed in Australia. It offers both applied evaluations of active assistance measures as well as critical assessment of the evaluation approaches that have dominated the literature and policy formation in Australia. "Active" assistance for the unemployed is distinguished from "passive" assistance, such as income support.The motivation behind the work lies in the fact that a very large amount of public expenditure is directed to active assistance for the unemployed. Over $2 billion dollars was spent on labour market programs at the height of the Working Nation package in each of 1995-96 and 1996-97, and$1.5 billion was allocated to "labour market assistance to jobseekers and industry" in the most recent (2001-02) Commonwealth budget. Despite this considerable past and ongoing expenditure, the evaluation effort in Australia has been far short of international best practice. As a consequence, there is no convincing empirical evidence as to how effectively these public resources are being used, or of the relative merits of various options in the design of active interventions for the unemployed.Ultimately, the goal of the research is to improve supply-side policies designed to address unemployment. As stated, it aims to do this through original empirical evaluations of programs and through critical assessment of existing evaluations and institutional arrangements

Deriving the labour supply curve from happiness data

An alternative empirical method to estimating the labour supply function is proposed, based upon subjective wellbeing data. It potentially addresses limitations of the standard neo-classical approach by allowing workers’ observed hours worked to deviate from their utility maximising point

Education and happiness in the school-to-work transition

Education is generally seen as enhancing people's lives. However, previous research has reported an inverse relationship between education and happiness or satisfaction with life: as education level goes up, happiness goes down. Using data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY), this report examines the relationship between education and happiness. The impact of factors such as family circumstances and personality traits are also considered. The report finds that undertaking vocational qualifications such as an apprenticeship has a positive impact on happiness both during the training period and after completion. For university graduates, however, happiness declines following completion of their study

Does school socio-economic status influence university outcomes?

This study explores the role of schools' socioeconomic status in determining academic performance at university. Data for first year domestic undergraduates at an Australian university in 2011 to 2013 are linked to schools' data to examine the role of student- and school-level characteristics in influencing university marks. Schools' socioeconomic status is found to have moderate impacts on university performance, with students from lower socioeconomic status schools faring better. Prior academic achievement, as proxied by ATAR scores, is found to be a strong determinant of university grades. School sector and resources are found to have negligible impacts on students' academic performance at university. The results suggest that equity measures to increase university access for low SES students and those from lower-SES schools could be expanded without compromising academic standards

Who'd be a nurse? Some evidence on career choice in Australia

In the context of on-going shortages of nurses, both in Australia and overseas,this paper looks at the factors shaping the decision to enter nursing as acareer. Evidence from four different Australian sources is drawn upon: anational panel survey of young school leavers, a survey of first year universitystudents in WA, a survey of Registered nurses in WA and in-depth interviewswith 30 young women studying for their WA Tertiary Entrance Examinations.The results concur with previous studies that have found entrants to nursingcourses to be of average-to-below academic ability and socio-economic status,to have an affinity for caring and to place greater relative emphasis onbalancing family and work rather than on career success. A number of newinsights into the factors influencing the decision to become a nurse are alsounearthed. These further highlight the importance of perceptions of genderroles in society and are consistent with psychological and feminist approachesto career choice

Forecasting the workforce needs of the Australian rail transport industry (ARTI)

Current and emerging skills shortages within the Australian rail transport industry (ARTI) are increasingly being reported. Like many other industries, the rail sector is also having to contend with an aging workforce and further labour shortages that are likely to result from the imminent retirement of senior staff and older workers. The ARTI’s heavy reliance on the skills of its personnel therefore means that such labour issues are likely to have important implications for the industry’s prospective output capacity. The development of accurate forecasting models to predict likely future trends relating to labour resources within the ARTI would therefore greatly assist the sector to anticipate its future skills needs. This paper hopes to contribute to this endeavour by presenting forecasts of future labour supply and demand within the ARTI, disaggregated by occupation. The projections are derived through a production function model which differentiates between the main occupational categories of labour as inputs, and with outputs based upon existing projections of freight and passenger transport task. Projected labour shortages and the average ages of rail workers within specific occupational groups are also determined and examined. The modelling assumptions are based on data and trends derived from primary research acquired from rail operators across the country, existing literature as well as the most recently available ABS statistics

Over-education, under-education and credentialism in the Australian labour market

This report examines whether expansion in education has led to credentialism in the workforce. The authors employ the ‘ORU’ model to compare the required level of education for a job and the actual level which is held by an individual in that job. This model defines an individual as being over-educated (O) for their job, having the right level of education (R), or being under-educated (U). Credentialism is then measured against the benchmark ‘right’ level for older cohorts. Findings show that younger cohorts will suffer from credentialism to the extent that more of them are over-educated compared with the older cohort. The ‘bite’ of credentialism is then measured by the wage penalty associated with this over education. However, the penalty is a modest one and on the whole additional study results in skills which are rewarded by higher wages

Occupational segregation and women's job satisfaction

Data on men and women’s job satisfaction conditional upon the degree of feminisation of their occupation are used to explore potential causes and implications of occupational segregation by gender in the Australian labour market. We find some evidence for the notion of ‘women’s work’ - that certain occupations are highly feminised because women prefer the type of work done in those occupations. However, this primarily applies to mothers, older women and wives and the results also offer strong support for the view that occupational segregation is generated by societal norms around the roles allocated to men and women. In particular, patterns in satisfaction with hours of work and with pay in highly feminised occupations are consistent with societal norms in which the work of married women and of mothers is seen as secondary to that of their male partner’s. In contrast to suggestions in some of the existing Australian literature, the results also clearly indicate that more highly feminised occupations are relatively poorly paid, other things held equal